Friday, May 18, 2012

Paperback Newsreel (April/May edition)


The latest issue of The Paperback Fanatic (#22) arrived the other day, and its chock full of novelization and tie-in goodness. First up is "Planet of the Tie-Ins," Cranston McMillan's roundup review of the PLANET OF THE APES movie, TV and cartoon novelizations. Next, Johnny Mains' column "The Paperback Dungeon" looks at David Sherwin's published screenplay if... (Sphere, 1969), the DR. CRIPPEN movie tie-in by Michael Hooker (Digit, 1962), and The Disoriented Man by Peter Saxon (Mayflower, 1966), which became the Vincent Price/Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing terror team-up SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (Popular Library published a tie-in edition in 1970). Finally, Graham Andrews reviews Robert Bloch's novelization of THE COUCH (Gold Medal, 1962) for the "Fit to be Tied" column. Great stuff as always. Issues are limited runs and sell out fast, so grab one while you can! Order a subscription to The Paperback Fanatic here.

A couple of related blog posts went up in late March and just missed being included in our February/March edition. Over at The Grindhousehold, Lucas J. Gutman reviewed Philly by Dan Greenburg, the kinky 1969 thriller that was loosely adapted into the popular 1981 sex comedy PRIVATE LESSONS. Read about it here.

Similarly, Samuel Wilson of Mondo 70 wrote a "book into film" blog post comparing Alan Le May's novel The Searchers to the John Ford film THE SEARCHERS, a terrific piece that can be found here.

Grand Central Publishing has a movie tie-in edition of Seth Grahame-Smith's bestseller Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter now available. The movie opens in the U.S. on June 22nd.

Here's one from from last December that managed to sneak by us: The Divine Woman by Gladys Unger, a novelization of a lost Greta Garbo movie from 1928. Based on the shooting script by Dorothy Farnum, which itself had been adapted from Unger's 1925 stage play "Starlight," THE DIVINE WOMAN (directed by Victor Sjöström) was stored in the same MGM backlot vault that housed Tod Browning's LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (1927), and both were destroyed in the same fire. Only a single nine-minute reel still exists today, discovered two decades ago in a film archive in Moscow. The book is available from BearManor Media.

Another one that got by us last year is the new American edition of the DAWN OF THE DEAD novelization by George Romero and Susanna Sparrow. It came out November 10th and is available in hardcover and paperback from St. Martin's Griffin. Meanwhile...

...a new British edition was just published May 10th and features an introduction by SHAUN OF THE DEAD star Simon Pegg. It's available in paperback only from Sphere.

It's Hammer time again! On July 5th, a new Hands Of The Ripper novelization will be released by Hammer Books. The author is Guy Adams, who also wrote the new KRONOS novelization (An earlier HANDS OF THE RIPPER novelization, by Spencer Shew, was put out by Sphere 1971).

Also on July 5th, Hammer will publish Shaun Hutson's new novelization of X THE UNKNOWN. And finally...

...Mark Morris' new novelization of VAMPIRE CIRCUS will be available October 4th. That's all for now! See you in a month or two for the next installment of The Paperback Newsreel!

Compiled by Chris Poggiali & Darrin Venticinque

1 comment:

  1. Thanks so much for mentioning my young blog. I've been a big fan of TOS from way back (actual 'zine days) and am honored that you would mention The Grindhousehold.

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